Mark of the Devourer
by Icy the Frostbringer
Summary: The day of the Springtime Summoning Ritual was supposed to be a defining accomplishment in the life of a mage. For Louise, it was a show trial. She was a failure of a mage, and no matter how hard she tried to prove otherwise she knew it was true. She went to face it anyway, refusing to flee in shame. But when her turn came up, Destiny had other plans. Her fate was not as it seemed.
1. The Summoning Pits

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

AN: This is going to be a bit of an experiment with a different style from what I'm doing with Code Geass. The chapters are going to be much shorter than I normally write, and more focused, rather than bouncing between perspectives and scenes like I normally do. It's a side project, and I have no idea how far it will go. That being said, I'll say up front that there's no master plan for this story, and it will probably never be "finished". It's just an exercise in doing something that feels different, and playing with some other characters.

Note: If you're reading this, I am assuming that you're familiar with Destiny (1 and 2), and have at least some knowledge of the Zero no Tsukaima series. For the sake of simplicity, you can assume that Louise is the player guardian. It's more complicated than that, and the "player guardian" doesn't actually exist in this AU, but more on that another time.

**Chapter 1: The Summoning Pits**

* * *

**Tristain, Halkeginia**

**Tristain Academy of Magic**

**Day of the Summoning Ritual**

A clear bright sky, complete with puffy white clouds, a gentle breeze, and the myriad sounds of chirping birds made for what should have been a good morning. For most of the students gathering in a field just beyond the walls, it would be so. In fact, it would be one of the best days of their lives so far. But as with every rule, exceptions were bound to exist. In this case, the exception took the form of a young woman, her flowing pink hair and immaculate uniform trying to conceal her anxiety.

This perfect spring morning was a special day for all of those in attendance. Since time immemorial, all six millennia of it, students attending academies of magic in all the known world performed a sacred ritual just before the Day of the Void. They would cast two spells passed down from the time of the founder himself, that once completed would signal the beginning of their lives as true mages. Failure upon attempt was so rare as to be almost unheard of. If they had made it this far, success was virtually guaranteed. Virtually.

Enter Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière, born of a prestigious noble family, daughter of a living legend, and having never cast a single spell correctly in her entire life. Everything she tried, from transmutation spells to fireballs to water manipulation, all ended up creating nothing more than an explosion. The only difference between any of them being of what yield it had. She certainly held a world record in that regard, or rather she would if such records were kept. Louise doubted they were. Nobody wanted to track accomplishments in ever more spectacular failure.

It was no exaggeration to say that her entire future depended on what she did in the next hour. If she were to cast the spells successfully, Louise would be the master of a newly summoned familiar, and have living proof that she was not completely without magical talent.

If however, as her infinite losing streak predicted, the spell were to fail, she would be expelled from the academy, and most likely discarded by her own family. Her mother, said living legend, had exactly zero tolerance for failure. She would be married off to some minor nobleman, as her current arranged engagement would undoubtedly be cancelled, or ejected from the ranks of the nobility entirely. It was also no exaggeration to say that death was a preferable outcome over that fate.

Louise watched as one by one, her fellow students at the Tristain Academy of Magic, the most prestigious such institution in the kingdom, stepped forward to summon their familiars. A great variety of creatures were called forth by those in the field, although most of them were little more than small animals or tiny magical beasts. A few oddities appeared as well, such as the poorly named bugbear, and a giant mole, but nothing truly impressive.

Then Tabitha, a quiet girl from the neighboring Kingdom of Gallia, summoned a large blue dragon. To the outright awe of all that could see it, she summoned the great creature, cast the binding spell upon it, and the pair walked off together to the back of the crowd as if it were an everyday occurrence.

Louise could not help but chuckle as her arch rival, Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst, failed to one up her. Although, a large fire salamander was still better than what most of the other students had managed. At least the fire salamander was a genuine magical beast, and not just another mouse or frog.

After what seemed like far too little time, her number came up. She was the last to attempt the summoning. After a year in this environment, the calls of ridicule that came from the students behind her simply bounced off of the armor her skin had become. She didn't care what any of them thought. She simply had no mental bandwidth for it. Her focus was solely locked upon the task before her: cast this spell as if her life depended on it. Because it really did.

She carefully inscribed her magic circle upon the cleared space, every stroke flawless and perfect. Despite her complete failure at practical magic, there were few that were her equal in the theoretical. She knew this ritual inside and out, as much as any student could. Louise said nothing as she finished the inscription. She took a deep breath and raised her wand, aiming toward the center.

Time slowed down for Louise as the words for the incantation flowed forth from between her lips. Hundreds of rehearsals in her mind had fully prepared her for this moment. Every word was thoroughly memorized and effortlessly recalled. She focused her power through the wand held in her right hand, drawing it upon the center of her circle.

All of her effort went into this moment, and as she cast the spell, Louise silently wove a wish into it. In her desperation, she wished upon anything that would listen, that she would bear any burden, or pay any price, that she could overcome this moment, and the enormous gravity of the world's expectations upon her. Louise wished for the power to make her own fate.

Little did she know, that something heard her.

As she completed the ritual, sparks of lightning flashed through the magic circle. The power coalesced, forming a large dark portal. Darker than black, it appeared as if it were a tear in reality itself, a void of nothingness, ringed by a faint green light that seemed to be sucked into the portal as fast as it appeared. It was a haunting sight, completely different than what any other student had produced.

Louise stared into the dark, not sure what to feel. The portal appeared, yet nothing emerged from it. No familiar to bind presented itself from beyond. Then, with sudden intensity, Louise knew exactly what to feel: absolute terror. Everything inside her was screaming that she should run away. Run. Flee. Escape!

Too late.

A giant hand covered in mottled chitinous plating reached out from within the portal with speed undue its size, trapping Louise between three enormous fingers larger than her entire body. She made not a sound as it pulled her back through, the paralyzing fear strangling the screams that otherwise would have come out as she was torn from the world, and the only life she had ever known.

* * *

**Unknown Location**

**Beyond the Portal**

**Day of the Summoning Ritual**

Going through the portal was easily the strangest experience of her life, strange enough that it even took her mind off of the complete insanity of the situation for a few moments. This was not how the summoning spell was supposed to work. It should not have even been possible.

Either an instant or an eternity later, Louise, and the arm holding her, finished its journey through the void. The world spun, or at least seemed to, as she exited the event horizon on the far side.

The room, or rather the cavern that she was in was unlike anywhere she had been before. Made of stone and odd, alien looking metal structures, going off far into the distance where a blue glow of unknown origin painted the scene in an unholy light.

As she looked down, the girl's heart felt as if it wanted to climb up out of her throat, while her stomach simultaneously exited out the bottom. A giant...monster held her in its grasp. Huge, hulking, and unmistakably hostile, the image lit Louise's nerves on fire. Panic and adrenaline flooded her system, as the overwhelming primal need to escape from this beast overrode everything else.

Louise began to struggle, and surprisingly, found herself free of its grasp quickly. As it was, the thing's giant fingers were just too clumsy to hold something as small as her. She dropped two meters to the ground, and ran behind some nearby cover that looked like an angled pillar directly in front of her.

She felt more than heard the giant creature roar as she slipped away, and then it made an even more terrifying sound: that of motion. With a sickening snap, the monster broke free of the its chains, and moved to give chase. Louise felt her heart racing like it had never before. She wanted to seize up and just shut down from the fear; curl into a ball and waiting for the end to come. But something shifted her focus. Only a few meters in front of her was a doorway. Powered by nothing more than pure animal instinct, she fled.

She scrambled up the rocky surface, having not the slightest clue where this actually was, and sprinted for that door with all the speed her little, underutilized legs could propel her to. As she ran, tunnel vision took over. That door, far too small for the monster to fit through, went through a metal wall built into solid rock. It represented escape, safety from the creature, and that was all that she could see.

In her haste to reach the opening, Louise failed to notice one crucial detail in her 'not quite an escape plan': a dozen smaller creatures were sprinting right at her from either flank, and they would have no trouble fitting through the passage.

Louise made it inside, out of reach of the giant behind her, and collapsed to the ground. Her whole body was shaking, and she was beginning to hyperventilate as she lay on her hands and knees. The metal under her bare hands was too cold, the air tasted wrong, and she had just the slightest moment to wonder what she was going to do now, when her ears reported a shrieking sound from behind her, along with the scrape of claws on stone and metal.

She had just enough time to turn around, reaching for a wand that was not there, as the first three eyed creature was rushing forward to perform a downward slash with its wicked claws. This time, Louise screamed until her lungs failed. The attack caught her in the left shoulder, but the creature's strength was enough that it just kept going, carving two deep bloody fissures through her torso. The girl barely registered the shock on her face before she was hit with another, and another, and many more after that as the pack of smaller, but still deadly creatures swarmed her. With their combined effort, it took only a few moments for them to paint the surrounding walls with her blood.

Louise Françoise le Blanc de la Vallière died screaming as her pristine flesh was flayed from the broken body beneath by dozens of merciless claws. Her final, terror laden thoughts wondered what was worse: this, or having to face her failure of the summoning ritual, and expulsion, and the humiliation that would follow. That question was left unanswered as the reaper came to collect.


	2. No Time to Explain

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

**Chapter 2: No Time to Explain**

* * *

**Unknown Location**

**Beyond the Portal**

**Unknown Time**

"Guardian." A faint, disembodied voice spoke. It sounded as if it were far away, or somehow underwater. Her mind fixated on the new input, the first in an indeterminate, but definitely long time.

How long had it been since last a thought crossed her mind? How long since she had felt anything. It was as if something had torn a giant hole through her soul, and so much of it was missing.

"Guardian." The same voice spoke again. This time it seemed to be distinctly clearer, and felt closer. The young woman...Louise, yes that was her name, tried to focus as it approached her.

This was the most alien feeling she had ever known. But what had she known before? Her memories seemed as if a shattered kaleidoscope, broken, jagged, and hopelessly disorganized. Only two things immediately came back to her. The first was her name, at least part of it. The second was that she had come through a portal of some kind. Not that she knew or could recall what or where existed on each end of that connection. She only remembered the portal.

A jolt of energy slammed into her consciousness without warning. In an instant, she felt awake, alert, and as if a disciplined legion of workers had reconstructed her in moments.

Feeling returned, first of her mind, and then of her body. She reflexively wiggled her extremities, if only to find out if they actually worked or not. Finally, Louise felt consciousness fully return, and she began to truly wake up.

"Eyes up, Guardian." The voice spoke once more. She knew now that it was right beside her. She could not help but do as it said, and she opened her eyes.

The first thing Louise saw was the source of the voice, a small glowing covered in some kind of counter rotating shapes. She did not know how, but in that moment she knew that she had never encountered anything like this being before. She also knew that she felt some kind of connection to it, although the nature of that connection remained elusive.

"What happened?" She managed to ask. The glowing, floating spiky ball seemed to perk up at her question.

"It worked, you're alive!" It exclaimed, and floated closer, as if to examine her. That left Louise with even more questions. Why was it surprised that she was alive? It seemed to get the hint from her glare.

"You died in here. Not that long ago, either." It reported.

"I...died?" She asked, more in disbelieving curiosity rather than shock. As her mental faculties returned, the more she realized that what she experienced could probably be explained by death. That only left the little impossibility of how in the name of the Founder was she 'not dead' now. Wait, the Founder? Louise's memory tried to call up the significance of that title, but was met with the mental equivalent of static garbage. She knew it should be important, but had no idea why.

"I do not know how or exactly when, but yes, you did die here." It told her. Although given its voice, she was beginning to think of it as him.

"Then how am I alive again? "

"That part's easy; I brought you back." He said.

"You can resurrect the dead?" Louise asked, this time with some genuine shock mixed in. That should not have been possible. She didn't know why, and couldn't remember a reason for it, but she just knew it to be true. Nothing should be able to raise the dead like this.

"I'm a ghost, your ghost now, actually. So long as a Guardian's Light remains, your ghost can revive you. I found you down here, a dim light in all this darkness." He said, although now visibly glancing off behind her, watching for something.

"What's a Guardian? You keep calling me that." She asked it.

"Guardians are those gifted with the power to wield the Traveler's Light." The ghost started as Louise slowly stood back up. As she returned to verticality, she began to part her lips in an effort to speak a retort that told the little ball that his explanation answered exactly nothing. Then, she suddenly stopped.

Louise felt the power within, and she knew what it was. Not that she could explain it with words, categorize it, or in any way truly describe it, but it was there. Like magic...but not. Not magic, or what magic was supposed to feel like? The ghost had called it Light, but if she had to give it a color it would be a dark purple. It felt bright but cold, empowering yet empty. The Light inside felt like raw, all consuming power, and it was hungry.

She opened her right hand, palm up, and concentrated on the power. There was no instrument of focus, no ritualized spell to cast, no words to be spoken. She willed it to be, and it just was. Louise watched in utter fascination as the power within came forth and coalesced in her hand. She stared into the ball of writhing, chaotic energy in her grasp and felt an unexpected, but not unwelcome surge of confidence.

"I see." She spoke, more to the power in her palm than to the ghost.

"Listen, I'll be happy to tell you everything in detail later, but first we have to get out of here before the Hive come back." He told her with more urgency than before.

"Hive? What are…" Louise started, but never got to finish. A harsh, inhuman shriek sounded from somewhere behind them. That sound cracked open a lost memory, and Louise suddenly went cold as death as she remembered the creatures that made the sound in all their horrifying detail. She suppressed a shiver.

"No time to explain." The ghost started floating forward. "We need to go, right now."

* * *

**Unknown Location**

**Beyond the Portal**

**Unknown Time**

Louise wrapped herself in the newfound Light as she followed her ghost, its power the only thing keeping her fear from consuming her. As they exited the room, she remembered the space before her, which she could now see was actually a large platform at the end of a massive underground cavern. Fortunately, none of the Hive creatures that her ghost mentioned were visible as they ascended to the path that led out of the cavern.

It was only now that Louise noticed, a bit belatedly, that she was covered in some kind of body suit, form fitting but not so tight as to be uncomfortable. In fact, it was so perfectly fitted that it barely felt like clothing at all, more like a second skin. Upon the suit was a light robe, at least it sort of looked like a robe. It was cut in all the right places as to not impede her movement in the slightest. Atop all of this was a helmet, although from the inside it appeared almost completely transparent. It was easy to forget it was even there.

She was pulled out of her reverie by the recurrence of that horrible screaming sound, and this time it was very close. Barely two seconds later, three creatures appeared through the doorway before them. They were various shades of grey, almost thin enough to be skeletal, and each bore three eyes, a vicious looking set of claws and teeth.

Louise's newly restarted heart lurched in her chest. Her eyes went wide and her hands began to shake as the sight of the creatures dredged up terrible memories to the fore of her mind. She remembered now, with sickening clarity, how a pack of these things had ripped her to pieces down in the chamber below and behind them. She doubted that her newfound apparel would do much to keep their claws away from her flesh for a second time.

Her shock and fear passed quickly, replaced by a blossom of fury. She did not even know what they were, but she was certain that she hated them. She wanted to destroy them, to kill them. Kill. Kill. KILL! Then, even more suddenly, the feeling shifted to an ice cold rage. Louise could feel the power stirring within her, as if it were searching for a way out. It wanted to devour those three beings just as much as they wanted to do the same to her. Now, she wanted to erase them from the world entirely.

Instinct took hold, one that she never knew she had, and she thrust out her left hand toward them. The power within, the Light, shot forth as a glowing sphere of energy. It hit the center figure square in what she assumed was its chest, staggering it. Then, a fraction of a second later, the world in front of her began to swirl. From where the ball of energy impacted grew the center of a vortex. Wild scintillating energy washed over the surrounding three meters, including the other two creatures. It wasn't benign.

The creatures caught inside the vortex began to shriek and thrash as it disintegrated them, their bodies breaking apart into glowing dust that flowed inward to the center. It only took a few seconds for them to die. When the energy dissipated, all that remained was a light coating of purple dust, and half of one leg that had been just a bit too far from the epicenter.

"Good job." The ghost said from beside her. "Most newly awakened Guardians can't project their Light that well so soon."

"What were those things?" She asked it, him, enormous stress evident in her voice.

"Hive thralls. They're the most common type of the Hive, and most often attack in swarms to overwhelm targets with their claws." The ghost reported. The unspoken part was that she was already intimately familiar with how that worked.

Louise kept moving until she made it out of the passage way. Though another doorway, and she finally emerged onto a metal floored area that circled half way around a titanic hole that went so far down the bottom could not be seen.

"Is it safer here?" She asked the floating ball.

"I'm afraid not. This is the Hellmouth, the Hive's main stronghold on Luna. We're on the upper levels, so it's not that much farther by distance, only a few more kilometers until we're out of here. But there's going to be a lot of Hive between us and the exit, and a lot worse than just thralls." He reported as if it were just an everyday occurrence to be faced with fighting through devils and monsters in their own realm.

More piercing shrieks echoed down to Louise's ears, and she tried to reinforce the bit of confidence that had just been built by killing the three thralls. This was a crash course, with almost no time to study either her new Light powers, or the Hive. It was exam time, and she would have to pass in order to make it out of this place.


	3. Emergence Day

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

**Chapter 3: Emergence Day**

* * *

**Luna, Sol System**

**The Hellmouth**

**Revival + Three Days**

Her ghost had not been exaggerating when he said that there was going to be much worse than thralls between what Louise now knew as the Summoning Pits and the surface. What should have been less than an hour's walk by distance had turned into a seventy hour running battle through the Hive's stronghold.

Louise had awoken at the bottom with virtually nothing. No weapons, no idea what she was facing, and even less information about how she had arrived in this place. By the time she reached the highest levels of the Hellmouth, that scared, confused girl was dead and gone, several times over.

The Hive had been merciless in their attempts to kill her, and had succeeded several times. But death was not the end for Louise, far from it. With every death, the pain and terror became more familiar. With every life, she grew stronger, and every time they killed her, she made them pay a higher price.

The Louise that emerged from the fortress, and took her first step out onto the grey surface of Luna was something new. Broken by combat and death, then put back together and reanimated by her Light. Over and over again, she was beaten into shape, as would a chunk of steel be heated and folded many times on its path from ingot to sword. She was the weapon now, having emerged from the trials behind her transformed. Louise had emerged from her forging a Guardian, a Warlock, a Voidwalker.

But even three days of hell could not have prepared her for the sight that greeted her eyes now. Beyond the Hellmouth, the surface was uniformly grey and lifeless. A distinctly pervasive coldness came over her out here. This was a thoroughly dead world.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a bright disc against the black sky.

Louise focused on it, her eyes resolving great swathes of blue, green, and white. She stared unblinking for what felt like years, but was probably no more than half a minute. Something primal inside firmly instructed her that it was the most beautiful thing those eyes had ever seen.

"What is this place?" She asked her ghost in awe.

"You really did come through a portal down there, didn't you?" The little sphere appeared and floated over into her field of view. "Every human alive in this system would recognize the surface of Luna, Earth's great moon."

"I told you, all I remember is being pulled through some green portal into that cavern. Everything before that is just hazy and jumbled." Louise replied.

"Not surprising. It's common for Guardians to experience memory loss of the time before their rebirth. There are a few that remember everything, but many more newly awakened Guardians that do not even know their names. But I've never met any human, Guardian or not, that can't identify Luna and Earth." He told her.

"Speaking of names…" She trailed off. It had only just occurred to Louise that she did not have a name for her ghost, and if he knew her name he had yet to use it. Had they really just fought for three days straight without even knowing something so basic about each other?

"I'm Saito." The ghost belatedly introduced himself.

"Louise." His guardian informed him.

"Alright, Louise, our first order of business is to once again get out of here in a hurry. Just because we made it out of the Hellmouth, doesn't mean we're that much safer. There haven't been any permanent friendly outposts on this rock since the Golden Age, despite the proximity to Earth." He explained.

"Where are we going now?" She asked, checking the charge of the wire rifle she had looted from the corpse of a Fallen vandal. The House of Exile's assault on the Hellmouth had been almost perfectly timed to take the pressure off of her, and give the Hive a more pressing target. As the Hive cared little for alien weaponry, the bodies of the Fallen patrol she discovered were still fully armed. She relieved one of them of its burdens, and told the dead alien that its weapon would continue the fight against the Hive without it, not that the dead could hear her speak. Not that she even knew what these creatures thought or felt for their dead.

"Not that far, I'll mark it on your map. Since we don't have any form of transportation, much less a ship, we'll have to get to the local transmat beacon and hail the Vanguard for a ride back to the Tower." He told her. She didn't quite understand all of that, but she got the idea.

"'Not that far', huh." Louise quipped.

"It won't be as bad as down in the Hellmouth. There are Hive on the surface, patrols mostly, as well as some Fallen scavenging parties, but not nearly as many as down below. If we made it through that, we'll be fine up here." Saito tried to reassure her.

Louise brought up the wire rifle, scanned the local terrain through it's low zoom combat sight, and saw no immediate threats. She started walking, hoping but not really believing that her ghost was right.

* * *

**Sol System**

**Space, between Earth and Luna**

**Revival + Four Days**

To Louise's relief, Saito's estimate of the threats on the surface of Luna had been close enough. The pair had only one close call, mainly due to a roving band of Fallen Pike light attack vehicles, but the drivers were distracted by Hive thralls long enough for her to hit two of them with the arc infused molten streaks that discharged from her captured wire rifle.

The rest had been trivial by comparison. Within just a few more hours she was being transported to a place her ghost referred to as The Tower, by a friendly pilot that was all too happy to pick up a new guardian. Louise tried to keep the sheer wonder of this series of events off of her face as they traveled. Even through the shattered lens into the memories of her past life, she knew that she previously known no concept of a craft like this being called a 'ship', or any notion of what 'space' was.

Even with Saito's explanations of the subject, Louise did not really get it until they had broken out of Luna's orbit. He piped a video feed from the rear of the ship into her helmet, and Louise watched dumbstruck as the 'world' fell away behind them, gradually resolving as just a giant sphere floating along in a limitless black expanse.

She remembered from somewhere knowing that the 'world' was round. It had been proven a dozen times over by all sorts of experiments. She knew and believed it to be true, even if she could not remember the finer details. But seeing it up close in real time was something else entirely.

Then, the magnitude of it all hit her at once. That place she had been was not 'the world', it was 'a world'. The lifeless rock behind them was one such sphere, as was the life covered blue and green planet they were approaching. She recalled from some memory that there had always been two moons in the sky, at least in her life before becoming a guardian. Neither were the color of Luna.

"Saito, are there any other worlds like Earth?" She asked him, not sure of how to phrase the question she needed to ask.

"That depends." His response came. "Before the coming of the Traveler, the answer would be no. Every other planet and moon in this system was just as lifeless as the surface of Luna, or worse. Earth was the only living exception. After the Traveler and the Golden Age, many of those bodies have been transformed to be livable, but none of them look like Earth." Louise felt a sudden, sharp injection of distance and loneliness.

"The place I came from, before I ended up here, was a place like Earth. I never saw it from so far away, but there were always two moons in the sky." She told him. He floated around for a few moments before answering.

"There are no other true garden worlds in this system, just Earth. If what you're describing is accurate, it must have been in another star system." He wondered at the possibility.

"What exactly is a star system?" Saito paused as she asked this question. Just what kind of world was she from? Did a colony ship make it out of the Sol system, only for the colonists to suffer technological regression on some new planet? No, it hadn't been long enough from the Golden Age for any population to fall that far. Still, it left him with far more questions that before.

"You know that Luna, the moon we were just on, goes around the Earth, right?" Louise nodded. "In the same way, the Earth, and all of the other planets in this region of space go around the star Sol, which is why it's called a star system, because the star is at the center. From what you said a minute ago, your world of origin is not in this star system, so it must be in another one, somewhere far away from here." He explained.

"How many stars are there?"

"There are hundreds of trillions of stars in the observable universe, Louise. In other words, there are more stars than there are grains of sand in every beach and desert on Earth."

"That's…" Louise's mind threw an error at trying to process that. She simply had no way to comprehend scale of that magnitude. She stopped trying after a few moments.

"Only what we can see." Saito finished for her. "There is more than just the observable universe out there, but that's a story for another time."

As he finished speaking, they both felt a shudder through the ship. Louise felt adrenaline spike through her, but Saito mentioned that this was supposed to happen. His reassurance calmed her a bit. After what they had just been through, she trusted him.

"Beginning atmospheric reentry, ETA to Tower ten minutes." The pilot's voice interrupted them.

"So soon?" Louise asked.

"Space is really big, so we had to invent an alternate way to traverse it in a reasonable amount of time. I'll spare you the details of how a warp drive works for now, but if we only used the ship's thrusters the flight to earth would have taken over two days." Saito added.

He put up a feed from the ship's nose cameras now, showing Louise a view of the world below. She didn't say another word as she stared, mesmerized all the way down.


	4. The Devourer

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

**Chapter 4: The Devourer**

* * *

**Luna, Sol System**

**Hellmouth **

**Revival + 117 Earth Years**

A sleek Reef made ship, a Hildian Seeker starfighter, came in low over the north ridge surrounding the Hive fortress, retro thrusters slowing it to a crawl just beyond the main surface entrance of the Hellmouth. There was no anti aircraft fire, no visible scurry of Hive infantry deploying, and almost no sound at all given the minuscule trace atmosphere up here. As it came to a stop, two figures appeared on the ground beneath the ship, a guardian and a ghost.

Louise touched down back on the surface of Luna with barely enough force to kick up dust. She looked around at the familiar grey surroundings, and felt a pang of nostalgia. She remembered the good old days, back when everything was full of mystery and wonder; when she was a brand new guardian having just clawed her way out of death's grasp. Now, it was death that fled from her grasp.

The strangest warlock in the Tower, Louise was a true oddity among the guardian community. The power of Solar Light and Arc Light refused to grace her, and every attempt to master them ended in utter failure, even after a century of trying. She would have been the laughing stock of guardians everywhere, except for one thing: Louise was by far and away the most powerful voidwalker in the history of the Tower. Nay, she was the most powerful wielder of Void Light to ever live, class or discipline be damned.

To most warlocks, even to most guardians, the power of Void Light was that of a hungry beast. You had to dominate it to command its power. But lose that control, and it would consume you instead. Louise was the clear exception to that rule.

The vicious power of Void Light gathered around Louise as if she were the true alpha of the pack. She did not need to enforce her will upon it, the power simply accepted her authority as if it were an undisputed law of the universe. It obeyed her will as its own. She wielded the power of the void with a mastery that no other living guardian could match, eventually becoming known across the Sol system as Louise the Devourer, after her favored voidwalker techniques.

That reputation extended beyond just the city and its guardians, however. As Louise walked forward toward the entrance to the Hellmouth, she did so at ease. She tread the path openly, not even bothering to draw the menacing Thorn that hung at her waist. She would not need it here.

The mysteries of how she ended up in this star system, and as a guardian, had never been fully solved. She had learned much of the Hive and their rituals, having spent decades tracking down every source of information she could find on them. Often this meant travelling where few guardians dared, to the farthest reaches and the deepest depths, and when she found what she wanted, she took it by whatever means were most persuasive. This most often ended with extreme violence, as everyone and everything spoke nova bomb.

But the summoning pits of the Hellmouth, the place where her new life began all those years ago, never truly left her. She returned to this place often, sometimes seeking answers, other times just to think. Her origin point in this star system was a beacon she could not resist visiting. As she did so over the years, she inadvertently accomplished something no guardian ever had before: she taught the Hive the meaning of fear.

For the first few decades, she had to fight her way back down to the bottom, killing hundreds, sometimes thousands of Hive on each trip. Over time, those that survived remembered her, the guardian whose void light could devour even the mightiest knights, and most brutal ogres. The guardian that could erase legions of thrall with a wave of her hand. The guardian that openly carried a Weapon of Sorrow in her hand as she did so, bending the Hive's own power to her will.

Eventually, the Hive stopped challenging her approach, for they knew that every such battle had only one destined outcome. Like light trying to flee from a black hole, every path led to failure. They retreated from view, and let the Devourer pass unharried.

Saito, her every loyal ghost, thought it was the most amazing thing ever. He constantly bragged about it to other guardians when they were in the Tower. It only fueled her legend. The Hive feared nothing, until they met nothing herself, the living embodiment of the void. Even to this day, they did not hesitate to face fireteams of the Tower's strongest guardians in combat, all except for one. After all, other guardians were just mere immortals.

This time, like the last thousand before, Louise descended into the Hellmouth in peace. The Hive continued their tradition of leaving her in alone, and she did the same. It made the whole experience easier for everyone if she didn't have to fight her way in. Even the knights at the entrance to the summoning pits, some of the very few that did not shrink from her presence as they stood guard, dared not raise their mighty boomers. She walked right between them as if she owned the place. In a sense, she did.

Louise's reputation among the Hive spoke for itself. She had descended into the deepest reaches of the Hellmouth, and murdered Crota on his own throne, in his own ascendant realm. When Oryx, the Taken King, came to Sol commanding a three and a half thousand kilometer long dreadnought, home to billions of Hive and Taken, Louise went to face him. Instead of exacting vengeance on his son's murderer, Oryx found only ruin and defeat before the Devourer's power. Even the mighty worm god Xol on Mars had tried and failed to defeat her. Not to mention the thousands of other great knights and wizards that had died in her presence. And that was just among the Hive, to say nothing of the countless other powerful beings she had felled in her endless quest for knowledge.

The two knights watched the slayer of gods and kings pass in silence. Louise looked up at them as she did, her small physical stature contrasted against her unfathomable power, and smiled beneath her Obsidian Mind. At least these two could face their fear. She could respect that. Maybe they would be leaders of the Hive someday, by default if nothing else.

* * *

**Luna, Sol System**

**Hellmouth, The Summoning Pits**

**Revival + 117 Earth Years**

The Summoning Pits were exactly as Louise remembered them: cold, dark, and ominous. Louise felt relaxed as she ventured back into the cavern, a feeling a bit like home. This was her point of origin, both where she had entered this world, where she had first died, and had been reborn as a voidwalker. She had even more or less claimed the side chamber in which the latter two of those events had occurred.

Few guardians ventured here anymore, not after the vanguard put a stop to strike operations on Luna following the Red War. After the devastation of the Red Legion's assault on the City, little care had been given to the Hellmouth. The Hive on Luna were, if not weak, certainly lacking strong leadership. They were disorganized, and wouldn't be conducting any meaningful attacks beyond the surface of this moon anytime soon. With the Fallen House of Exile also gone, the Vanguard had no pressing need to be here.

That left Louise with a bit of peace when she was here. If the Hive dared not challenge her, and no other guardians invaded their fortress, the place was strangely calm and quiet. While she was not alone, there were a few Hive in the chamber with her, they kept their distance and did their best to ignore her. She could focus her mind on the problems at hand.

Or rather, Louise would have been able to focus, if she did not feel the distinct flare of a sterile neutrino spike. A very, very big spike. The local Hive were not to blame, that she knew from experience. The sterile neutrinos, as Asher Mir loved to go on about, were a byproduct of tearing brute force ruptures in spacetime, and only forces in the system that used such methods were the Taken. The foul spawn of Oryx had located her here, and they were coming in force.

Louise barely had time to draw the Thorn from her belt before the first blights began to appear in the room. Around the spheres of darkness, reality itself began rip open, torn asunder by the Taken. Vile, twitching Taken infantry began to pour into the cavern, and Louise immediately had to find some cover as a storm of projectiles converged on her position.

The Taken were easily the strangest, most nightmarish creatures she had ever encountered, stolen souls of all species, still wielding the same weapons they held in life, now corrupted and infused with pure darkness.

Louise popped out from behind her pillar and brought up her Thorn. In quick succession a pack of Taken thralls went down to rapid headshots, their essence remnants slowly drifting toward the cursed hand cannon. As they reached it, Thorn consumed the energy, feeding on the souls of its victims to amplify its own power and produce more ammunition. Louise used this to full effect, slaying dozens of attackers before she had to manually reload, stopping only to throw scatter grenades or disintegrate a closer thrall.

As the next wave of Taken began to warp into the space in front of her, Louise jumped up, and floated ten meters above the ground. As the rift opened, and a dozen former fallen emerged, she pooled her void light into her left hand and dropped a devastating nova bomb right on their heads. The blast of energy vaporized everything it hit, erasing the threat in one shot. The problem was, she needed a lot more than one shot.

All around her, more and more rifts were forming. The Taken were undoubtedly drawn here by her enormous void energy, and the more she used it the more Taken would come. She threw another nova bomb, and another, and three more in quick succession. Over a hundred taken fell to her bombardment, however most of them were weaker types that moved in packs. A violet streak lanced past her head, and she noticed that twisted versions of Vex hobgoblin snipers were appearing on the far ledge, their corrupted line rifles beginning to flare.

From in front, the steady attacks of thralls and scions were soon joined by Taken knights and captains, drastically increasing the threat coming at her.

Beneath her helmet, Louise smiled. They were committing so many to their attempt to overwhelm her, and she knew why. The Taken didn't want to kill her, they wanted to Take her, to corrupt her mind, body, and soul, turning her into what would probably end up being their new queen. With Oryx dead, the Taken had no central leadership. They were simply drawn to points of strong energy, hoping to consume it, of which Louise just happened to be the strongest beyond earth.

Her Thorn sang as ever more dark spikes reached out to punch holes in twitching heads. The power of the weapon was wasted on the lesser Taken, who fell by the kinetic impact of single shots. The knights were tougher. Louise shot one charging knight six times, and watched as burning green lines traced across its body as the curse consumed him.

Louise reached deep into her power, searching for an answer as the overwhelming numbers kept coming. She began to float as void light filled her body in dangerous amounts, yet she kept increasing the power. Then, with enormous violence, the power erupted from her. Everything within five meters disintegrated, the ground burned to glass, and Louise charged the power even more as she floated toward the enemy. Nova Warp was a technique she had only recently discovered, but given her unique situation she could get more out of it than any of her peers. She floated around the room, incinerating Taken with increasingly powerful explosions until she could sustain it no longer.

Hundreds of the abominations fell, but the Taken kept coming. They knew no fear, no mercy, held no sense of self preservation, just the endless hunger to feed on more power. The attack wasn't relenting, or even slowing. For the first time she began to worry. There were just too damn many of them. Even if she killed them at a rate of a thousand to one, they would still overwhelm one single guardian. Louise didn't fear death, but what the Taken had on offer was much worse than death.

Then, directly behind her, came the feeling of another portal. This one was structured, organized, more of a gateway than a tear in the universe. It wasn't Taken, and it wasn't Hive. It was familiar though, even if she couldn't place how or why. With the room filling with ravenous Taken, and no other way out, Louise threw another nova bomb, the slower cataclysm variant, to cover her retreat as she turned and sprinted toward the black and green portal. Wherever it went, it was better than dying here again. Probably. It was a bet she was willing to make. She dove into it.


	5. Transdimensional Abduction

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

AN: It's been quite a while since I've watched ZnT, so expect a bit of OOCness ahead. My image of the cast is thoroughly distorted by reading hundreds of stories of wildly varying style and quality.

**Chapter 5: Transdimensional Abduction**

* * *

**Tristain, Halkeginia**

**Tristain Academy of Magic**

**Louise's Disappearance + 45 Minutes**

The headmaster's office got crowded in a hurry. After dispersing the students from the field, and trying to force them to keep silent on the matter with threats that probably could not be actually enforced, the academy's leadership stood together, albeit unsteadily. Although the shock of what had occurred had not yet worn off for most of them, they had already begun working on ideas to fix this.

What had just happened down there was so utterly unthinkable that none had ever even imagined such a scenario coming up. In the history of the Tristain Academy of Magic there had been so few incidents of any sort involving the springtime summoning ritual that it was ranked up as one of the safest events a student here could look forward to. At least it had been, until the third daughter of a very powerful noble family had just been literally pulled from the world by some kind of monster in front of over a hundred witnesses.

That in itself was a major problem to be considered right now. The last thing that any of them wanted was Louise's mother finding out about this before they themselves even knew what had actually happened. Their impromptu attempt at a coverup was not going to hold for very long, especially once some of the students tested it. They would then have to make the decision whether or not they were bluffing.

"What in the name of the Founder was that thing?" Ms Chevreuse asked in a hollow voice. Several responses came back all at once, but none of them were in any way helpful.

"Let us start with what we know. Wild speculation will get us nowhere." Osmond, the elderly headmaster of the academy cut in over top of them.

"She did cast the spell." Jean Colbert added. "The result wasn't quite like any of the others, but she did cast the summoning spell and opened a portal to what we should assume is the familiar it chose for her."

"That...creature was truly her familiar then?" Chevreuse asked him.

"We don't know that. All that we do know is that she opened a portal, and that the creature was on the other side. Louise did not cast the binding spell before she was taken through the portal. There was no time for her to even try," Colbert continued.

"Therefore," Osmond went on. "We know that Louise was sent to wherever in the world that the creature that grabbed her came from. "Ms Chevreuse, get the descriptions of the being's arm from all the students that witnessed the event, and try to figure out what it could be. That will help with narrowing down regions at least."

"I'll get right on that." She replied in a hurry and excused herself.

"The rest of you, get back to work and keep the academy in order. Act as if the past half hour's madness never occurred. To the best you can, at any rate." Osmond told the rest of them, and they began to follow Chevreuse's retreat from the room. Except for Colbert, whom Osmond stopped as he was moving to leave. When the rest had cleared out, and it was just the two of them alone in the room, the tone changed.

"I know much of your troubled past, Flame Serpent. Far more than I ever let on." Osmond addressed him. Almost caught off guard given the day's events and the subject of the meeting, Colbert rallied before the surprise showed through.

"This is hardly the time, headmaster. Unless you're accusing me of having something to do with what happened to Louise." He shot back.

"A more perfect time, there could not be. No, Professor Colbert, I am not accusing you of anything sinister today. What I am accusing you of, is being a man that truly knows how to keep a secret. That's exactly what I need right now." Osmond said, with a grin only he could pull off.

"You know something more about where she was pulled off to?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that. I'm afraid I do not have the faintest idea of what that abominable creature was, or where such a thing would live. However, what I do have is a way to bring her back." Osmond explained.

"Shouldn't the rest of the staff know about this? If you have a way to save Louise, surely more than the two of us would be needed."

"Ideally, yes. However, this is not an ideal situation. I simply cannot trust them with knowledge of this...particular method."

"Am I to believe that there are others in this academy with even darker pasts than my own?" Colbert asked him. "If what you said is true, then you know what I once was. Yet I am here and they are not."

"It is precisely because so few share that knowledge that you are here. You have proven yourself fully capable of burying the truth." Osmond told him.

"What truth do we need to bury? We're trying to save one of our students."

"The sort that involves a banned spell. One that, should anyone find out that it has been cast, could easily result in all involved being excommunicated or even executed. There's a reason it's buried in the academy vault in disguise after all." Osmond revealed.

Colbert paused upon hearing this. He had never known of any such 'banned' spells existing, much less the details of how to cast one. What could possibly be so terrible that the church in Romalia would try to erase the knowledge of a spell? Try being the operative word, since magic was the source of all nobility.

"What does it do?" He asked bluntly.

"You have Louise's wand, yes?" Osmond asked him. Colbert nodded and produced the item from a pocket.

"She dropped it when the...creature grabbed her." The professor told the headmaster. He continued his explanation.

"The spell itself is in fact a variation of the summoning ritual we're all so familiar with. The difference is that it requires a catalyst to function. A magical item attuned to the target to be summoned, such as a mage's wand, is a perfect such artifact. When the spell is cast correctly, the target is summoned, whether they want to be or not." Osmond explained. Colbert's eyes narrowed, the implications of the description hitting him instantly.

"Ah, now you see why Romalia has tried so hard to erase this from the world." Osmond continued.

"But of course they still know of it." Colbert cynically pointed out.

"Indeed they do. But enough about that. We're planning a rescue, not an assassination." Osmond continued. "With this spell, we can summon Louise back to the academy, no matter where she is now, or what her current state is. In truth, the most dangerous part will be concealing the actual events of this night."

"That sounds safer than trying to explain to Dutchess Vallière how her daughter was abducted from the care of the academy by magical means right in front of our faces." Colbert commented.

"Potentially angering the church, or definitely incurring the wrath of the Heavy Wind. That's no choice at all, professor." Osmond smiled at him.

* * *

**Tristain, Halkeginia**

**Tristain Academy of Magic**

**Louise's Disappearance + 8 Hours**

Retrieving the item that contained the hidden spellbook from the academy vault was a simple matter for the headmaster. Slightly more challenging was doing so in such a way that there were no witnesses. Even worse, he would have to repeat that feat after all of this was over. The book had to be returned if suspicion was to be avoided. Things of such gravity could not simply disappear from the academy vault after all.

But that was a worry for another time. Preparations to cast the forbidden summoning spell were underway now that night had fallen on Tristain. While Osmond studied the text in the spellbook, Colbert was sent to retrieve something to boost the catalyst that would be used to focus the spell.

The actual tome called for the catalyst to be an object, magical in nature, that was uniquely attuned to the specific individual in question. There were several things that could serve that purpose, but it seemed suspiciously tailored to the description of a mage's wand. Perhaps that was the original intended purpose of this spell, and the current description was made to sound more ordinary on purpose, but that was useless speculation.

Upon realizing that the wand Louise had used for the summoning ritual was in fact a brand new one, Colbert had retrieved two older examples, kept in reserve as spares, as well as five strands of nearly meter long pink hair from her quarters. While the wand he had may technically have been good enough, they only had one chance to get it right. Crafting a stronger catalyst may help the spell locate Louise more reliably. The three wands were then gently tied together with the strands of hair to create a single catalyst that undoubtedly contained enough of a magical signature for the spell to lock on to. They had everything they needed to begin the operation.

Now, in a forest clearing north of the academy, under the cover of darkness on a night illuminated by only two faint crescents peeking between cloud cover, the catalyst was placed at the center of the expertly crafted summoning circle that Osmond had meticulously recreated from the text. Speaking no words, Colbert nodded to Osmond, who began to cast the spell. Despite acting as his assistant, he wasn't privy to the text, or the fine details of how this ritual was supposed to work. That was fine by him. He had no need to know, and did not want to.

As they did, Colbert could not help but glance around at the surrounding forest, watching for any unbidden visitors or spying eyes. As he did, he could not shake the feeling that someone was watching them, even if he could not spot any such lurker in their surroundings. That sense had developed in his younger years, a long time ago in a violent life he had spent the last decade trying to bury. But it was still there, for better or worse.

In the confusion of the day, he had all but forgotten what had occurred only a few minutes before Louise's incident. Namely, that one of their brightest wind aligned students had summoned an actual dragon. The observer nowhere to be found in the forest was actually to be found almost a kilometer above them, riding her blue familiar in a lazy orbit around the clearing. With the help of certain wind spells, one to create a small tunnel through the clouds, and another to amplify sound, she was listening in as if she were standing beside them.

Neither of the men on the ground truly noticed being spied on from the air as the forbidden magic came alive in the clearing. The summoning circle began to pulse with power, as the spell identified the owner of the catalyst, and opened a path to bring her to this place. The energy coalesced into a rippling sphere of energy floating above the center of the circle.

After half a minute, the energy above the circle calmed, and a portal formed from the chaos. Within moments, a humanoid being flew out of it, rolling around in one fluid motion. It, she raised...something. Was it a wand, or a pistol? It was both, Colbert guessed, as the weapon flashed with strange green light. The shot struck a strange creature that emerged from the portal, it's head exploding from the impact. Then it fired again, faster than any gun he had ever seen, and again, and again, clearly not satisfied so long as there were still monsters to kill.


	6. Return to Sender

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

**Chapter 6: Return to Sender**

* * *

**Unknown Location**

**Through the Portal **

**Portal Entry + 5 Seconds**

Louise came through the portal's far side almost two meters off the ground. She landed in a roll, surprisingly on wet grass, not dry lunar regolith or Hive floor plating. Definitely no longer on Luna then. No matter, she had no time to ponder hew new location. She barely came out of the roll and brought her weapon up as the first Taken thralls emerged through the portal behind her.

She emptied the cylinder at them, killing ten of the abominations with nine shots, the last due to a combination of lucky overpenetration and the Thorn's cursed projectiles. That tenth thrall withered and died with a menacing black spike protruding from its chest, the weapon of sorrow proving effective even against beings of pure darkness. As before, the unholy green orbs of their remnants floated toward her Thorn, replenishing itself and becoming temporarily more powerful. Just in time to engage the first Taken knight to emerge from the portal.

Louise kept firing, staying close enough to absorb the remnants as to avoid the need to reload. Just as before in the Hellmouth, the Taken kept coming, but this time they were funneled through a narrow choke point. She shaped her light into a vortex grenade and threw it right in front of the portal. The next dozen or so Taken creatures that emerged were ripped apart in the swirling energy.

The vortex gave her just enough time to charge another nova bomb. She pooled the light in her palm and threw a three pronged shattered blast, exploding around the portal like a nuclear shotgun and erasing the next batch of Taken to emerge. Louise's heart fluttered as she realized that the attack caused the portal to weaken. It was beginning to flicker as the connection strained against the powerful assault. The voidwalker drank deep from her light, unleashing one, two, then three more volleys of radiant explosive power.

When the blast faded and the dust settled enough to see again, the portal to the Hellmouth was gone, replaced by a series of craters that ironically enough reminded her of an impact pattern on Luna's surface.

"Well, that was something." Saito said, appearing just over her left shoulder. The ghost had wisely stayed hidden during the battle. Even though the Taken's weapons probably could not harm him, he had nothing to personally add to the fight.

"They've never done that before. Must be getting pretty desperate without their king." She observed.

"It's you they want. You killed Oryx, so you're the most worthy of replacing him, whether you want the job or not. It doesn't help that you've killed most of his ready made successors too."

"Louise the Taken Queen doesn't sound all that appealing to me. I think I'll pass." Louise quipped as she finally took a moment to compose herself and look around. With all immediate threats gone, she attention went to figuring out where exactly the mysterious green portal had dumped them. Sure, at the moment, anywhere had been better than being drowned by a Taken horde in the Hellmouth, but that was then.

"Uhh…" Saito began, his uncertainty triggering all sorts of alarms in Louise. "This is pretty strange."

"What kind of strange are we talking about? Having my peaceful trip to Luna interrupted by obnoxiously rude Taken in battalion strength is what you're measuring against." She told him.

"Way worse than that." Saito's serious undertone made Louise feel like a lump of ice was now stuck in her lower abdomen. She had a bad feeling about what was coming next.

"What is it, Saito? Where are we?" She asked quietly.

"I don't know." His answer stopped her cold. Saito was a ghost, an amazing being forged of the Traveler's light. He could hack into alien networks, open doors locked with Hive magic, guide his guardian through Cabal warships, simulations of alternate futures, and even variable reality in Vex strongholds. He never 'did not know' what to do.

"I'm not detecting any signals. None, at all, on any frequency. No City transmissions, Fallen or Cabal chatter, or Vex data links. Not even anything on Hive communication methods." He explained.

"Is there anything that could cut off all traffic that you know of?"

"No." He said bluntly, his shell spinning in frustration. "At least, not in a place like this." He motioned to the natural clearing they were in. "Not even in a Vex simulation of a place like this. Nothing I can think of that could block radiation that well would look like a grassy field under an open sky."

"Well, there has to be some explanation." Louise said.

"The only one that comes to mind is distance. There's no planetary surface in the Sol system this radio silent, even beyond Neptune. The only logical explanation is that we're really, really far away from… oh, that's not good." He muttered, half to himself.

"What is it?"

"We're in a stable, natural gravity field of 0.972g." Saito reported. They both shut up, because they both knew that there was no habitable world in the Sol system with that gravity measurement. They would know, they had visited them all repeatedly. That could only mean that they were well and truly lost. Even the Drifter hadn't gone this far off the map on his legendary troublemaking adventures.

"Saito, are there two moons in the sky?" She asked her ghost. Of all the broken shards of memories that she still had of her distant past, she never lost that detail. The world she came from was Earth-like, and had two moons. She had a feeling, a cold, sinking feeling, that she knew where she was, at least what planet it was.

"Scanning." He said, spinning around and running his sensors at the cloudy sky. "The clouds are too dense for optical imaging, but I am reading gravitational distortions that would be best explained by two orbiting moons, one smaller and one larger."

"Saito, remember how I always said that I'm from another world? Well, I think that's where we are. There were two moons where I came from, and this place just feels hauntingly familiar." She told the floating ball, worry in her voice.

"If that's true, the amount of energy necessary to generate that portal across interstellar distances must have been enormous. The Taken sure didn't do it."

"It was probably formed from this side. It had to have happened at least once for me to have ended up in the Hellmouth in the first pl..." She began.

"Movement on your seven." Saito chirped, interrupting. Louise spun around, Thorn raised and ready to extinguish whatever beings lurked in the shadows behind her green targeting reticle.

Instead of projecting spikes cursed death toward them, she slowly lowered the barrel toward the ground, but not quite at ease. Two humans had emerged from behind the cover of solid, mature trees. They weren't carrying weapons, or at least nothing she or Saito could identify as one, certainly no guns, although one did have a wooden staff. Instead of looking threatening, they seemed to be awestruck, probably having witnessed her devastate the Taken that pursued her through the portal.

A moment later, Louise froze as her mind processed the image. These two weren't complete unknowns. She recognized them both, the sight screaming familiarity at her, yet her memory failed to recall any useful information about them. They were from her previous life, her time before the Light. That right there was all the confirmation she needed, but it only raised even more questions.

* * *

**Tristain, Halkeginia**

**Near the Tristain Academy of Magic**

**Moments after Portal Opening**

Colbert and Osmond took cover almost as soon as the portal opened. The strange, terrifying creatures that poured out of it were unlike anything either of the two men had ever seen in over a century of combined experience. So too, was the first figure that emerged from the portal only moments before. Obviously human, unlike the monstrosities she was fighting, and rather easily killing, if the spell worked correctly, then that should have been Louise. The problem was, they had both seen plenty of Louise in the last year, and she could neither move and fight with such violence, nor cast anything like what they had just witnessed. She still had a wand, gun, something of some sort, but nothing they could recognize.

What the hell had happened on the other side of that portal? It had only been a few hours since the original summoning ritual. If that truly was Louise, something very strange had undoubtedly occurred.

They both underwent a visible sigh of relief as the small woman obliterated the last of the monsters, and destroyed the portal with her unknown magic. Then, a small floating creature appeared, and she began to converse with it, although neither of the Tristanians could understand the language the pair were speaking. Osmond, not quite so accustomed to being out in the field in his old age, stepped on a twig. Immediately, the figure whipped around, strange wand raised straight at Colbert. Like a pistol, the Flame Serpent realized after a split second. She lowered it slightly as he opened his palms, thought not quite dropping his staff.

"Louise? Is that you?" Colbert asked hesitantly. The figure stared at them for a few moments, and then the black helmet she was wearing just...disappeared into a mist of light. Beneath was a face and abundance of pink hair that they recognized immediately. But not the look on that face, or in her eyes. Colbert immediately hardened his resolve. Those were the eyes of one that had seen death and did not blink.

"How?" She asked disbelievingly after remembering to switch back to a language long since disused. "How are either of you still alive?"

"What do you mean? What was supposed to have killed us?" He could not help but ask, confused as he was.

"Time, of course. Either you're immortal, or you've found a way to reverse time. Which is it?" She asked, in a completely serious tone, as if either were actually possible.

"I'm sorry, Louise, but I'm afraid we have no idea what you're talking about. It's been half a day since you cast the summoning ritual, and were...taken through that portal." Osmond interjected, just as confused as either of them.

"Half a day?" She laughed. "It's been one hundred and seventeen years, four months, and nine days since I 'left' this world."

Louise then realized almost as soon as the words left her mouth that she didn't actually know that. That was the official time count according to Saito, and she had no idea how long it had been between her death and Saito resurrecting her. Probably hours or days, but a few decades at most. Still, that did nothing to change the utterly impossible fact that these two men were claiming that she had been teleported back to the same day that she had left this world. Even the Vex would be challenged by attempting such a feat of time manipulation across light years. If they could do that, they would have already won.

"A hundred years? That's…" Colbert began to comment.

"Just as impossible as me being here, in this time." She looked around, finally spotting the academy's towers above some of the trees. "What did you do?"

"We cast a...spell forbidden by the church, one that we believed would summon you back. It was risk, but worth it to rescue a student in peril. At least it seems to have worked." Osmond told her. He left out the bit about doing it because he was terrified of what Louise's mother would do when she found out about this mess.

"Maybe it was forbidden for a good reason. I've known about this spell for all of a few seconds, and I'm already thinking of ways to abuse it." Louise countered.

"Fortunately, we were successful on the first try. I'm sure we can keep quiet about it being used once." Osmond went on.

"Twice." Louise corrected him.

"We only cast the spell one time." Colbert said, wondering what she meant.

"That's right. Now, do it again and send me back. I have places to be, monsters to kill, and things to learn, none of which involves me staying on this underdeveloped rock any longer than necessary." Louise told them, crossing her arms over her chest plate.

"I'm afraid that's not possible." Osmond told her.

"You just did it." She pointed out the obvious to them.

"You misunderstand, Louise. This is not a transportation spell. Its only purpose is to summon a person to the location of the magic circle used in the casting. It only works in one direction. There is no known magic that can return you to the location you were summoned from."

"I've done this trip both ways now, and you're telling me that it's impossible to do, even though I've already experienced it? How is that supposed to make sense?"

"The summoning ritual you cast earlier today works much the same way. It opened a portal to a creature, with the intent of bringing that creature to the circle. The target of the spell is not controllable. There is no way to make it send you back that we know of." Colbert explained.

"Besides, aren't you happy to be home?" Osmond asked her.

"Home?" She laughed at them, looking around the forested clearing. "Home is a feeling, not a place, and I'm not particularly feeling it, stranded an incomprehensible distance away from everything I know and love." Louise grumbled. "Thanks for giving me an escape from the Taken, but I'd rather still be in the right star system."

"Well, some rest in your own bed may help. Let us return to the academy. It's been a harrowing day." Osmond commented, glad that the night's events were seemingly at a close. Louise tried to think of some reason to say no, or to not just do what he said, but could not. If she were to reverse, or reverse engineer, whatever strange magic they had used to bring her here, she would need to first understand what it was. An academy would be a good start. She began to walk toward the towers in the distance, having no other objective.

"What's a star system?" Jean Colbert asked her with genuine curiosity. Louise struggled to avoid burying her face in her hand.

"Saito." She said flatly, motioning toward the bald man. On que, the ghost appeared, floated over, and began explaining the concepts of orbital mechanics to the fire mage. At least she didn't have to teach Saito a language first. She reformed her helmet around her head and sighed, taking comfort in being fully buttoned up. This was not the kind of adventure she wanted right now.


	7. Long Road Back

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

AN: I'm breaking Destiny's inventory rules for the sake of the story. They're just gameplay elements that don't really exist in canon. Louise has multiple exotics equipped, mostly because exotic gear is a bit more memorable than whatever expansion's armor/weapons. Of course, that doesn't mean stuff of lesser rarities won't be showing up, but non Destiny players certainly won't grasp (of malok) the power of stuff like a god roll Hopscotch Pilgrim or Blast Furnace.

(Louise is wearing pretty much the same stuff my warlock is, with a Prodical Hood instead of Obsidian Mind isn't in D2.)

This is just like subclasses having fixed abilities at any one time. They don't, and guardians in lore are much more fluid than represented ingame, also for gameplay reasons. I already rekt that part by having Louise use a total mashup of Destiny 1 and Destiny 2 voidwalker in the same fight. Byf did a few pretty in depth videos on how this works in canon, particularly with the difference between Sunsinger and Dawnblade if you want to know more.

Chapter 7: Long Road Back

* * *

Tristain, Halkeginia

Near the Tristain Academy of Magic

Louise's Return + 30 Minutes

It was barely three kilometers from the forest clearing to the academy, but to Louise, it felt like a long road into the distant past. She had little intact memory of her time before becoming a guardian. Most of what was left consisted of scattered faces and vague images of locations that no longer held context or meaning. Who had she been in this world? The question was no longer simply academic.

The two men walking beside her certainly seemed to have an answer, but were totally unprepared for the state she returned in. They were expecting a terrified little girl that would be happy to be rescued, not a battle hardened warlock that had been there, killed that, and studied what was left. They were dumbstruck that her memory of this world, and her life in it, was so thoroughly degraded, even disbelieving at first, until she asked them to explain how their system of magic worked.

Apparently, according to professor Colbert at least, she had been one of the academy's top students in all matters theoretical and academic. She was herself supposed to have been able to easily answer every question that she asked them. Knowledge that had drifted away with the sands of time.

That left Louise feeling even more lost. Here she was, an unimaginably long way from home, forced back into a world that she knew virtually nothing about, but had been well versed in during some distant past stage of her life. She got the feeling that there were many battles to be fought in the near future, but not the sort that she could blast her way out of. To her dismay, Nova Bomb was probably not a universal language here.

"Saito, go up to about ten kilometers and map out the area. We're going to need all the intel we can get." She told her ghost, who immediately began to float skyward. With his excellent sensors, she would have a decent map of local topography and landmarks in a few minutes. It wouldn't be as good as real orbital scans, but probably better than anything she was likely to find locally.

"What is that amazing creature?" Osmond asked her. "Is it your familiar?"

"Saito? He's a ghost." She noticed the look on their faces. "No, not that kind of ghost." Louise paused, searching for a way to explain it that would work for people with no concept of advanced technology.

"Back home, there's a powerful being known as the Traveler. It was...crippled in a great battle long ago. Unable to defend itself anymore, it created the ghosts to find those capable of bearing its Light themselves, and empower them to do so. Those that wield the Light are known as guardians." She was over simplifying the hell out of it, but it would do for now. She continued. "They are always a team, one guardian and one ghost. I suppose that does make him my familiar."

"That magic you cast against those Taken creatures, that was this...Light?" Colbert asked.

"Yes. But Light is a spectrum, and there are three types. Solar Light, the power of flame and fire, Arc Light, the power of storm and lightning, and Void Light, the power of chaos and consumption. I'm a master voidwalker; Void Light is my specialty." She explained, deciding not to mention that she was utterly worthless at trying to do anything more than cheap party tricks with the other attunements. Hopefully that would wait to come up until some indeterminate future. Far future preferably.

"Void? Impossible. There are no void mages. The Founder was the only one, and that was six thousand years ago." Osmond responded. Louise's right arm began to glow as she coalesced the Light into her hand. A swirling sphere of violet energy floated a few centimeters above her palm, and she held it out for the skeptical man to see. He stared, awestruck. Even though he had seen her unleash such power a short time ago, it wasn't the same thing as seeing a practical display of wandless void magic up close with his own eyes.

"I don't know what a 'void mage' is, or what you would consider to be 'void magic', but I do know the Light inside and out. This is Void Light. Whether that's the same as what you call void magic here is not for me to say without an example to compare." Louise told him.

"Is there something else we can call it then? Mentioning anything that could be misinterpreted as void magic may draw the attention of the church, and that's the last thing we need right now. Not after what we did to bring you back." Colbert asked her.

"Then just call me a warlock and my power Light, or Light Magic if you must. You wouldn't be wrong in either case. Besides, I do not know if the Light and your system of magic are in any way related. The Hive, another race of monsters from back home, have powers and rituals commonly referred to as 'magic', but with no relation to the Light at all. Guardians, even those that understand it well, have very little ability to recreate Hive magic on their own." She explained. They didn't need to know about Taeko-3 and the void crystals.

"Fascinating." Osmond chirped.

"What happens when we reach your academy? It's not that much farther." Louise asked.

"Tonight, we rest. This has been a very long day for us all. Tomorrow, we must figure out what to do with you. We were expecting to return you safely after a traumatic few hours, not discover than you had lost most of your memories and learned to cast a form of strange, powerful magic." Osmond told her. "It's put us in an unexpected, and unprecedented position."

"I think it's quite obvious that she cannot continue on as a normal student in this state. I believe Louise is telling the truth about what happened to her, which means that not only is she suffering from general memory loss, but also that she has lost most, if not all of her knowledge of arcane theory." Colbert told the headmaster.

"True, professor, that is a valid point. However, this is also an opportunity. Here we have a whole new type of magic, and a very capable practitioner of this new power. There is much we could learn." Osmond wondered aloud.

"If you think I'm going to be reduced to some kind of test subject, I'd be happy to give you a demonstration as I blast my way out." Louise said flatly.

"No, no. Nothing of the sort." Osmond appeased. "There is much you could teach us of the world you were sent to, and its strange magic. Just think of how much the academy could gain by being the first source of this knowledge in Tristain, or maybe even all of Halkeginia."

"That may actually be a good idea." Saito reappeared from his mapping expedition and chimed in. "We know that there is magic in this world that can manipulate space and time on a level that would make even the Vex jealous. They've done it to you twice. If we can figure out how it works, and learn that power for ourselves…"

"Oh, you devious little light. I like the sound of that." She grinned at her ghost.

"Transport back to the Sol system, teleportation that puts blink to shame, stuff like that." Saito suggested.

"Alright, let's make a deal. I'll give you the knowledge you want, and in return you help me figure out exactly how your rituals work." She offered to the academy men.

"Tempting." Osmond said. "But there's still the not so small matter of your mother to deal with, and I know that if you succeed in mastering those spells, you'll probably just leave us to her wrath."

"I don't remember having parents at all. Is my mother someone important?" She asked.

"Louise, your mother is Karin the Heavy Wind." Colbert told her, almost showing how shocked he was at having to actually inform her of that.

"And? What's the significance? I just told you that I don't remember who she is."

"Karin is the greatest wind mage in the known world, and easily the most powerful in the last century. Armies have fled the field instead of facing her in battle, more than once in fact." Colbert continued, recalling at least three times in which that had been confirmed to occur. 'Armies' may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but thousands of trained and experienced soldiers had decided that retreating four kilometers was preferable to being thrown five through the sky by a magical tornado.

"So what do you want me to do about her?"

"When she gets word of what's happened today, she will undoubtedly make an appearance at the academy. I want my school to survive that." Osmond told her bluntly. "I want you to convince her that your...present condition is no fault of the academy or its staff."

"That seems like a reasonable price to pay. I'll do it, if you help me."

"Splendid. I'll get you full access to the academy's extensive library, and dig up everything we can on the summoning rituals and related spells. Meanwhile, you will work with professor Colbert to uncover how your Light magic works. But, that's enough planning for now, and a job for tomorrow. I'm getting too old for exciting things like this." Osmond continued.

Silence held for about a minute, until they cleared the forest and the academy walls became fully visible about 300 meters distant.

"Saito, what do we have to work with here? We're farther off the map than any guardian's ever been, and I wasn't planning for a long vacation." Louise asked her ghost.

"Not much. Your Seeker is probably still in orbit over Luna, and it'll fly itself back to the Reef if it's out of contact for too long." He said.

"That's alright. At least I trust Petra not to let anyone steal it." Louise commented, trying to remember exactly what automated emergency flight plans it had stored. It would probably end up back at a hangar on Vesta.

"Unfortunately, it's what's inside the ship that we're really going to miss. Weapons, armor, your sparrow, and all of the raw materials we had stored in its transmat matrix." He reported.

Together, guardian and ghost took stock of what they had left for this unplanned journey. Louise still had her armor, a set of Iron Symmachy robes and gloves earned through victories in the Iron Banner, an Obsidian Mind helmet, her trusty Transversive Steps, and a Binary Phoenix Bond from Lord Shaxx. New Age Black Armory shaders on everything, of course. She liked black and red.

For weapons, she of course carried her Thorn, but Saito also informed her that he held her old wire rifle in his own limited transmat matrix. She would have liked to have known that during the battle with the Taken since she thought she left the rest of her arsenal on the ship, but it was too late to matter now. No point getting mad about it. She was glad Saito had held on to the old Fallen weapon.

It was the same wire rifle she had found in the Hellmouth over a century ago, now upgraded and modified to be as good as the Queenbreaker variant some guardians operating in the Reef carried. Charging it would be an issue, as would finding rare materials to maintain it, but it was an old friend. The Fallen built their guns tough, and this one was a prime example. Louise knew she could make it work, even in a technological desert like this place was turning out to be.

It was not the loadout Louise would have picked for being stranded long term, her MIDA Multi Tool definitely would have been on that list, but at least what she had was well balanced. Saito assured her he could create more, or even replicate gear he had the designs for, but finding the materials necessary in a place like this was a long shot at best. Ammunition and electricity were a challenge, but doable. Exotic materials and rare elements were quite another.

"Don't worry, we'll be fine. We always are." Saito reassured her. "What was it that Lord Shaxx said to you that one time?" Instead of playing the actual voice of Shaxx, he did his own best impersonation of the man. " 'Look at you! At what one guardian can do, with nothing but their Ghost, their weapon and their Light.' Well, we have all of that." Louise froze mid step.

"Is something wrong?" He asked.

"You just reminded me that there's no Crucible out here." She sighed, displeasure clearly audible. She kept walking in silence after that, into the large stone structure before her.


	8. Can't Touch This

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

**Chapter 8: Can't Touch This**

* * *

**Tristain, Halkeginia**

**Tristain Academy of Magic**

**The Day of the Void**

Louise woke up the next morning thinking of all the things she wanted to do, and places she wanted to go. Then, the events of the previous day came roaring back like a Thundercrash to dispel her wishes, and she remembered where she really was. Part of her wanted to roll over, go back to sleep, and hope that maybe this would end up being a dream when next she awoke. Guardians could do just fine without sleep, even through days or even weeks of continuous combat, but she still enjoyed dreaming every once in a while.

Reluctantly, she got up, also remembering that this was supposed to be her bed. The entire feeling of this place felt alien to her. Colbert had led her to this room, and told her that it, and everything within, was hers and had been for over a year. Yet she remembered exactly nothing of it. A little bit of the academy interior was vaguely familiar to her, notably the large dining hall that they had passed through, but not this place.

Fortunately, she had no need of the uniforms in the closet. Her immediate reaction was that they were completely worthless garments that offered little protection from the elements, and none from hostile action. No warlock would be caught wearing those.

She stood up, naked, and thanks to Saito, the form fitting undersuit of her armor appeared on her body in a swirl of light, just as perfect feeling as it always was. In seconds she was just a helmet away from being able to operate in any environment, from tropical paradise to irradiated airless desert. She left that off for now, leaving it stored in Saito's transmat matrix, but re equipped the rest of her gear. Louise exited the room, Thorn on her hip, and her wire rifle on her back, the old Eliksni weapon partially covered by her hair that was left to flow freely instead of being trapped inside a helmet. It would be there if she really needed it.

It was only as she was exiting the room that Louise realized that she had absolutely no idea how to interface with this place. She wasn't some young student from a noble family anymore, if she ever really was at all. Memories of that time seemed to be well and truly gone. Her life consisted of combat, exploration, and hands on study in the field. She was truly out of her element in a place like this.

In the City, the Tower especially, everyone knew guardians, even if they did not know exactly who she was, they could still identify her as a warlock. They knew what that meant. But here? This was an academy teaching an unknown form of magic to decidedly mortal human students. How was she, a quasi immortal warrior scholar used to endless interplanetary warfare, supposed to interact with them?

Furthermore, it was obvious that this place, maybe even this whole world, was technologically primitive. Magically advanced to a degree, but still many centuries behind Earth, and pre Golden Age Earth for anything that required physics and engineering. These people had the rough equivalent of seventeenth or eighteenth century tech at best, and were well behind in some areas. That alone threw out any number of ways she may have been able to procure local assistance.

"So, where to first?" Saito asked her, appearing over her right shoulder. "Dining hall or library?"

"Might as well find out what they eat on this planet." Louise muttered as she turned toward the hall. "The library will still be there in an hour, the food probably won't be."

A few minutes and several corridors later, Louise found the dining hall once more, and it was far more lively than the first time she had passed through it. Instead of being empty, there were at least a hundred people in the cavernous room, mostly students and a few people that appeared to be servant staff.

Louise wasn't sure what first caught their eyes, maybe the fractal blue glow of her Transversive Steps, but soon enough she had dozens of eyes upon her. She kept walking, not paying them any attention. Despite being human, Louise could not help but feel that they were as alien as any Fallen or Cabal she had run into over the years. Although, she had met a few not so Fallen Eliksni, Mithrax and Variks immediately came to mind, that she could almost call friends. These people were much the same; they looked like something she recognized, but that was where the similarities ended for most of them.

She took a seat, and a decidedly too upbeat servant arrived moments later Louise got a plate of something that looked and smelled and tasted like good chicken, a glass of actually good wine, and a glass of water her ghost was far too interested in.

"Is there something in the water?" She asked Saito as he hovered over the glass.

"No, there's nothing in the water, but that's the interesting part." He replied.

"What do you mean?"

"For a place with virtually no technology, I'm wondering how they managed to hand you a glass full of virtually pure molecular H2O. There's traces of other substances from being exposed to the atmosphere, but still. This is far too pure to have come from a natural source. Even City manufactured filters would have trouble replicating it." Saito floated around the glass, unleashing the full might of his sensor suite on it, and causing a light show in the process. All around them, people were staring at the talking, floating creature that they all assumed to be Louise's familiar.

"Go track down the servant that brought it and see if she knows. You'll probably get an answer along the lines of 'it's magic', but you might learn something. Or maybe it really is magic." Louise suggested. Saito agreed and flew off, eager to solve the water mystery.

As he did, two more female students approached and sat down just to her right. The first was tall, with caramel tan skin and flowing crimson hair. Only one eye was visible as half of her face was covered by said hair. The second was visually less impressive, being almost as pale as snow, with light blue hair. Her eyes were different though, they were those of a person that had seen battle and death up close. Ms tall and dark sized her up with an aura of confidence that had to be backed up by something, whether real or imagined.

"So what really happened yesterday, Zero? The strange portal, that ridiculous arm, and what's with that outfit?" The redhead asked. Louise could already tell there was going to be some friction here, so she did the one thing that would be sure to piss her off; she stayed perfectly calm.

"In my line of work, you have to wear something a bit tougher than a skirt." She replied, not even looking at the girl. "A lot of things have tried to kill me. I don't make it easy for them. A little bit of armor helps in that regard."

"Last night." The second girl spoke before her friend could. Her voice was quiet, but focused. "Those creatures you killed, what were they?" Hearing this, Louise perked up, wondering just how she knew that. Had she witnessed the fight from somewhere nearby? That was the only logical answer.

"The Taken. They are beings corrupted and transformed by malevolent dark energies. Their only real motive is to consume anything even remotely powerful, so it's best to just kill them on sight." She explained. The first girl looked completely lost as her friend's question was answered.

"Where did they come from?" She asked with genuine curiosity.

"They followed me through the portal that brought me here. There were maybe a hundred or so that made it through, out of the thousands on the other side. I destroyed the portal before they could get a hold on this side, and left no survivors. We shouldn't see any more of them around here, at least for a while."

"What was that magic you used?" She asked,

"I answered your question, now you answer mine. What's your name, and where were you last night?" Louise countered. She looked visibly surprised at being asked for her name, as if Louise should have known it. Maybe she should have, by this girl's timekeeping.

"Tabitha. I watched from above the clouds with my familiar. I used wind magic to open a small hole through the cloud layer to see the clearing. I saw you fight them."

"Whoa, slow down." The first girl interrupted. "What happened last night, and who did Louise fight?"

"Headmaster summoned Louise back. Taken creatures followed her and attacked. She destroyed them." Tabitha explained.

"Louise? The Zero that can't even cast a simple transmutation spell right?" She asked, disbelieving.

"I saw it." Tabitha replied. "Destroyed the creatures and shut the portal with strange magic."

"Light magic." Louise continued for her, taking the opportunity to get the name in their heads early. She didn't want to even use the term 'void' if it would just lead to extra headaches. "It's not something you have around here."

"Prove it." The redhead demanded. "All you've ever done is blow things up. You disappear yesterday casting the safest spell in the world, and now you come back and claim to have some kind of strange new magic." Louise grinned.

"Let's play a game. If you can touch me in the next thirty seconds, I'll tell anything you want to know."

"Anything?" The redhead asked greedily.

"Anything you can think to ask me." Louise told her. The redhead instantly reached for her, faster than Louise was expecting, but not nearly fast enough.

"Blink and you'll miss me." She said.

The whole room stopped what they were doing as Louise teleported five meters backwards in a violet flash. Over a hundred pairs of eyes were staring at her dumbfounded. Louise was a bit surprised by their reactions, until she remembered that she was so far from home that nobody had ever seen a warlock blink before. If they hadn't seen that, then they certainly hadn't seen a blade dancer do it either. Was there really no local equivalent of blink? Something about that idea just seemed wrong. How could these magical people live without blink? It was an absurd notion.

"How! How did you just…" The redhead gaped.

"Stop gawking and start trying. Twenty four seconds left." Louise told her with a loud grin. Her opponent scrambled away from the table and lunged toward her. She got close, but Louise blinked again, this time five meters to the right. Again, her opponent redirected herself toward her. Louise repeated the performance for the next twenty seconds, laughing hysterically as she made the redhead literally run in a circle as she teleported around the room.

By the time it was over, the audience had joined Louise, and a few of them looked as if they may asphyxiate from laughing too hard. They may have been awed by the display, but watching her pursuer fail so completely was pushing all their buttons.

For Kirche, it was a complete and total role reversal. Louise had never managed to so thoroughly thwart her as she had just done. She was still so awestruck by the fact that Louise the Zero had just performed some kind of ridiculously advanced magic, without a wand and seemingly without effort as well, that she had no idea what to say. She just stood there, truly speechless. She was supposed to be the class clown that always blew herself up, literally and figuratively, not...this.

"Well, how's that? Enough of a demonstration?" No response came, at least nothing intelligible from the caramel redhead who appeared to still be in shock. "Who is she, anyway?" Louise asked the girl she now knew to be Tabitha. This time it was Tabitha's turn to show even more surprise. Both of the girls looked familiar, if familiar was an accurate description for blurry ancient memories. She knew somewhere deep down that she had probably known them on some level in her pre guardian life.

"You really don't know, do you?" She spoke, more as a statement of fact rather than a question. From the context of the situation, Louise surmised that she was supposed to know these people from some time long forgotten. "How?" She asked.

"I've been gone a long, long time. So long, that I barely remember anything about who I once was before. To you, it was a few hours since I disappeared, but to me…" She nodded.

"Different." She said. "You're Louise, but somehow not."

"That's one way to put it. I'm not the Louise that you remember. She...died a long time ago." She tried to frame it.

"You're not kidding." The redhead beside them mumbled just loud enough to be heard.

"Start over?" Tabitha asked them both. The other nodded dazedly, still trying to comprehend that her supposed rival had truly gone, in spirit if not in body. She got back up, took a deep breath, and tried to compose herself. It was almost comical how fast she went from a beaten wreck to a puffed up big girl with a disturbing amount of self confidence.

"I am Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst." She proudly proclaimed, as if that was supposed to mean something to Louise. She clearly thought it should.

"That's a mouth full." The warlock appraised blandly. Kirche immediately twitched in visible irritation.

"Why you little…" Kirche reached for her, but Louise once again blinked back.

"Didn't we just learn that won't work?"

"Louise, if you're done playing with the locals, we're supposed to be at the library in five minutes." Saito interrupted, floating his way over. Louise took the escape offered.

"You should come with us, being as you were there last night." Louise offered to Tabitha, who nodded in agreement. Clearly she wanted to know more about what actually transpired.

The two of them began to walk off, Saito floating beside, and Kirche moved to follow them. New Louise or not, she was not going to let a Valliere get away with ignoring her. Louise walked away, continuing to do exactly that all the way to the library's door.


	9. An Arcane Mystery

Disclaimer: I do not own Zero no Tsukaima or Destiny

**Chapter 9: An Arcane Mystery**

* * *

**Tristain, Halkeginia**

**Tristain Academy of Magic**

**The Day of the Void**

Louise wasn't quite sure what to expect from the academy's library. Her first thoughts were that of the ancient, decaying old libraries and book rooms she had passed through in parts of the European Dead Zone. They had a certain aesthetic, and a common feel, even over five centuries after the Collapse. While most of the actual paper in those books was long rotted away, many of the more durable covers remained in place where they sat.

At least, that was what she thought of after disregarding the more modern concepts of a library. Sure, there were plenty of physical books in the City, but they were mostly treated as historical objects and relics more than anything actually useful. 'Libraries' in the City were essentially just server farms, to be accessed by virtually any connected device. A closer comparison would be the Cryptarchs' vaults, where engrams and data were often stored in physical isolation, disconnected from external networks.

When they arrived, she opened the door, looked up, and immediately became a roadblock for the two following her. The room before her looked largely like what she expected, except for being ridiculously tall. The ten meter high bookcases were a bit much. How did they even get up there? Some kind of flying spells? Probably so, she realized, noticing that there were no ladders, steps, or other obvious means of vertical movement visible.

There were few students in the room, or rather the space was so big as to make it appear that way. None were near the section she was moving toward, almost on the opposite end of the cavernous space.

Within the academy's library, there were several subsections, mostly dedicated to knowledge of specific magical disciplines, divided by their element. She passed a few shelves related to lightning magic, an advanced subset of wind magic, as she made her way toward the restricted section. This was an area of the library ordinarily unavailable to the student population, and was walled off from the rest of the library, both physically, and also magically with similar spells to those that secured the academy's prized vaults. Whatever knowledge was within was obviously worth protecting to the locals.

Unlike most who approached this section, Louise was expected. The stylized gate, far stronger than it physically appeared, was opened from within. Inside the magical barrier was a space far more cramped than the library surrounding it. The bookcases were of a reasonable height, although the actual working area was limited to a small section near the entrance. Professor Colbert stood at a small wooden table in the center of the clear space, which looked to be big enough for maybe five people. He looked warily at the pair following Louise.

"I'm sorry, but I can't let you into the restricted section. Louise has a legitimate reason to be here, but you do not." He told them.

"Tabitha was there." Louise said. He blinked and turned to her.

"Last night? I did not see anyone else in the clearing." Colbert mused.

"Up." The quiet girl said.

Up? Colbert wondered what she meant for a brief moment before remembering that the girl in question had summoned what appeared to be a blue wind dragon as a familiar the day before. Had she learned to ride it so quickly? Was it really only yesterday? It felt like weeks ago. His sense of time was still moving in a blur.

"She saw everything." Louise told him.

"Only Tabitha?" He asked. They both nodded.

"Sorry, Ms. Zerbst. I'm afraid you'll have to wait outside." A few moments, and a deflated Kirche later, the three of them were sealed into the restricted section of the library as the door closed and the wards reengaged.

"Apologies for the security, but this section is restricted for a reason. It's rare that anyone even comes here." Colbert said, walking a few steps over to the table and the assortment of books arrayed upon it. There were seven in all, and without exception, all looked absolutely ancient, yet somehow very well cared for.

"Those look...really old." Saito said, appearing from thin air over Louise's shoulder, his blue glowing eye transfixed on the display.

"Indeed they are. All originals, and there are no known copies. In addition to being a school of magic, we're also entrusted with the care and preservation of priceless artifacts...and things best left secret." He continued.

"These are all about summoning magic?" Louise asked him. He nodded.

"There are more, many more, books on the subject here in the library, but you're not going to find anything more detailed than what lies between these covers."

"Fascinating." Saito muttered, as the blue light from his glowing eye intensified, bathing the table in its glow. His shell swirled with excitement as he analyzed the texts with his sensor suite.

He couldn't tell how old the books were, the protective magical energy from what he thought was some kind of preservation spell kept them in exquisite condition, but that only aided in his ability to scan them. In moments, he had scanned and translated the volumes, and began to analyze them for patterns.

"Is there anything useful in there?" Louise asked her floating companion. Colbert looked on in astonishment of his own. Had that little floating creature just read the texts in an instant?

"Potentially." He answered. "Apparently, summoning spells are in fact rare around here, in terms of variety. The most commonly cast version is known as the springtime summoning ritual, where mages in training summon some creature to be their familiar, which is how you ended up in a Hive summoning chamber on Luna. From what I can tell by the texts here, the spell itself is quite vague in its mechanics. There's a lot of religious connotations that may be helpful in determining its origin, however. I think we'll need to find an even more ancient source to truly start to decompile it.

The spell that brought you back is a bit more interesting. It was apparently made as an alteration to the springtime summoning ritual, although it goes into no further detail of how the original works. While the original spell summons a creature based on some as of yet unknown criteria of the caster, this modified version summons a specific target through the use of a focus tied to the target." Saito explained at length. "The modified summoning ritual only appears in one of these books." He added.

"Which is going back in the academy's secure vaults once we're done here." Colbert told them, glancing at Tabitha again. He was still unsure about letting her in here. Even if she had seen everything at a distance from the air, she wouldn't have seen enough details to know much about the other summoning spell or even known about the book.

"Professor, how is the familiar summoning spell supposed to work? Clearly it did not for me, but I'm the exception." She asked him.

"It's an ancient tradition that a familiar summoning be performed in the spring, usually just before the Day of the Void. The ritual is supposed to summon the most suitable familiar for the mage performing it. For example, Tabitha here is talented with wind magic, and summoned a wind dragon. Ms. Zerbst is the strongest with the element of fire of any second year student, and she summoned a giant fire salamander. Generally, the summoned creature in some way matches the elemental affinity of the student, or if it was previously unknown, helps determine it." He explained.

"But the banned spell, the one you used to bring me here, uses a focus. What does the focus do, specifically?" She asked.

"Headmaster Osmond would know more about it than I would. I've only ever seen it done once, and I was simply assisting him with it." He admitted.

"Normally, when the original summoning ritual is performed, the energy flows from the caster, through their wand, and into the summoning circle. According to the text, the focus acts as a middleman in that process." Saito answered, analyzing the book he scanned earlier. "All of the energy is channeled through the focus and then into the summoning circle, instead of from the caster directly."

Louise thought about that for a few moments, her mind snagging on one particular detail.

"What if it's the exact same spell?" Louise wondered aloud. Everyone else stopped thinking when she said that.

"How could it possibly be the same spell?" Colbert asked.

"It could be if you're just exploiting a flaw in the original's logic." She argued, tempted to make analogies to code exploits, but stopped herself when the realization caught up with her that Colbert would not even know what computer code was. Best to avoid that topic.

"The summoning ritual can't possibly be flawed. The Founder himself is supposed to have developed it." Colbert told her.

"Alright, maybe not flawed." Louise gave, deciding not to descend into an argument over claims of religious infallibility. "But this is definitely an unintended behavior." She continued. "If the spell was intended to be cast by a mage directly into a summoning circle, then something about the ritual probably analyzes the caster to find the best 'match' that it then opens a portal to summon. If you use a focus strongly tied to a specific being, then wouldn't the focus actually be 'casting' the spell, since it's what feeds energy into the circle?"

"Summons the best match for the caster." Tabitha repeated aloud in thought, breaking her silence.

A cold chill went down Colbert's neck. It suddenly made sense, at least academically. The ritual summoned something that was the best match for the caster, or at least it should. If the 'caster' happened to be a bundle of Louise's spare wands wrapped in a few strands of her hair, then wouldn't Louise herself be the best match it could summon? It made sense, but the implications were stunning. And terrifying.

"You must not repeat this to anyone, do you understand? The implications are maddening." He told them with newfound urgency.

"You think I'm right?" Louise asked.

"It would need to be tested, but it may be so. If what you just said is true, then this information cannot be allowed to escape the academy." he warned.

"Well, that sounds dangerous." Saito chimed in. "It's like everyone having the tools to transmat their opponents straight into an ambush at will. Hard to think of a better method of assassination or capture than to summon the target into a place of your choosing by force."

"Still." Louise began. "As interesting as this is, it still doesn't help us very much."

"I suppose we could technically use the same modified ritual to return, but we would need a suitable focus that would open a portal back to the Sol system. I don't think we have anything that qualifies." Saito expanded aloud.

"Try to summon a familiar again?" Tabitha asked them.

"I doubt it would work." Louise mused. "I suppose I could do that to go somewhere else, but the universe is a big place. If it opened a portal to another world once, who knows where a second attempt would end up. Besides, even if it did work and send me home, I would be gone without solving the mystery. That just won't do."

"Here we go again…" Saito mumbled to himself. Louise shot him a look, but she had a grin on her face. "Warlocks. No wonder both you and Osiris went back into the Infinite Forest without a second thought after that mess with Panoptes."

"What's Panoptes?" Colbert asked, curious for more information about where she came from.

"It's…" Louise began, but stopped. How was she going to explain something as crazy as a Vex Axis Mind that lorded over infinite simulations of alternate realities inside of a planet sized computer to this man from a preindustrial civilization?

"Panoptes was the 'king' of a place called the Infinite Forest." Saito saved her from the problem. "It's a long story. I'm sure we'll have time to talk about it later, after we get this sorted out. What I meant was that Louise, like many warlocks, cares more for knowledge than the final result it brings. It would seem that we're not leaving until we figure out how your system of magic works." Saito explained.

"There are many volumes on magical theory here in the library, and I don't believe any of those are locked in the restricted area. You're free to help yourselves to reading them." Colbert told him.

"That won't be enough to satisfy her." He said bluntly, his shell twirling around his central core. "She'll need more than just the words and rituals you use to cast spells. I've known Louise long enough to know that she's not going to stop until she figures out _how _your magic functions, and _why _it works." Beside him, Louise was nodding with a smile.

"That's how you reverse engineer something. Study the final product until you figure out the real details behind it. That's what I need to do in order to crack the summoning ritual." She said.

Saito looked at his guardian with the realization that they were going to be here for a long time. Louise was _obsessed _with summoning magic. She had intensively studied Hive and Taken magic, as well as certain Vex technologies, such as what methods Skolas used to attempt to pull the House of Wolves of the past forward through time, and the Vault's Oracles. She had a pretty good understanding of those topics, even if the application of them remained generally out of reach for a guardian. But now she had a whole new mystery to solve, and it was perfectly presented in her favorite form.

Louise picked up the book that contained the modified summoning ritual. It was one thing to have her ghost scan and record everything for review later, but it was another to experience the original artifact first hand. She parted the hard cover and got to work. There was so much to learn, so much to investigate, that next twelve hours went by in a flash.


End file.
